Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 44 views

    Some Historical Facts of English

    Uploaded by

    Kseniya Moskovskaya
    English has changed significantly over time due to various influences. It originated as a Germanic language brought by Anglo-Saxon tribes between the 5th and 6th centuries AD, though now bears little resemblance to Old English. Following the Norman conquest in 1066, French became the dominant language among nobility and greatly enriched the English vocabulary. By the 14th century, English was reestablished and standardized, and underwent further changes through Latin and Greek influences of the Renaissance. English became the most widely spoken language globally through British colonial expansion starting in the 17th century.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Some Historical Facts of English

    Uploaded by

    Kseniya Moskovskaya
    44 views4 pages
    English has changed significantly over time due to various influences. It originated as a Germanic language brought by Anglo-Saxon tribes between the 5th and 6th centuries AD, though now bears little resemblance to Old English. Following the Norman conquest in 1066, French became the dominant language among nobility and greatly enriched the English vocabulary. By the 14th century, English was reestablished and standardized, and underwent further changes through Latin and Greek influences of the Renaissance. English became the most widely spoken language globally through British colonial expansion starting in the 17th century.

    Original Title

    some_historical_facts_of_english

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    English has changed significantly over time due to various influences. It originated as a Germanic language brought by Anglo-Saxon tribes between the 5th and 6th centuries AD, though now bears little resemblance to Old English. Following the Norman conquest in 1066, French became the dominant language among nobility and greatly enriched the English vocabulary. By the 14th century, English was reestablished and standardized, and underwent further changes through Latin and Greek influences of the Renaissance. English became the most widely spoken language globally through British colonial expansion starting in the 17th century.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    44 views4 pages

    Some Historical Facts of English

    Uploaded by

    Kseniya Moskovskaya
    English has changed significantly over time due to various influences. It originated as a Germanic language brought by Anglo-Saxon tribes between the 5th and 6th centuries AD, though now bears little resemblance to Old English. Following the Norman conquest in 1066, French became the dominant language among nobility and greatly enriched the English vocabulary. By the 14th century, English was reestablished and standardized, and underwent further changes through Latin and Greek influences of the Renaissance. English became the most widely spoken language globally through British colonial expansion starting in the 17th century.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    of 4

    SOME HISTORICAL FACTS OF ENGLISH

    All languages change constantly, and English is not an exception. The


    language we speak and write to day is the creation of all generations that have
    gone before up, and we in turn help create the English of future generations.
    The most obvious kind of change occurs in vocabulary. But language
    changes in more complex and subtle ways. We have our own opinion of the status
    of the man who says: "She won't never do nothing". But Shakespeare's nor this is
    not my nose neither was good Elizabethan English; and when Chaucer wanted to
    be emphatic about the perfection of his knight, it was perfectly natural for him to
    say that he nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde.
    Even the sounds of the language changed. For Shakespeare, reason
    sounded much like our raisen, the vowels of face and glass were much the same.
    The l in such words as would and should was pronounced.
    Few of us realize that English is basically a German language, descended
    from the language of the Germanic tribes (the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) who
    invaded the British Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries a.d.
    Some of the surviving specimens of this languages – now called Old
    English – hardly seem like English at all.
    In the more than 1,000 years since the sentence was written, English has
    clearly altered immensely. Its vocabulary, particularly, has been continuously
    enriched and modified by external influences. Even before the time of King Alfred,
    the coming of Christianity had left its Latin mark in such words as angel, candle,
    priest, school and many others.
    The Danes, who repeatedly attacked their Germanic cousins from the
    eighth century until the eleventh, left their imprint on the language. They brought
    the words: skill, skin, sky, anger, root, ill, happy, – and even pronouns: they, them,
    their. All these words are of Germanic origin.
    But the first really great growth and change in English vocabulary came
    after 1066 when William, then Duke of Normandy, made good his claim to the
    English throne at the Battle of Hastings.

    1
    For several centuries thereafter the rules of England were kings whose
    native language was French.
    Though English continued to be spoken by the common people, French
    became the language of the law, of the court, and the upper classes. For a century
    at least it was the only language that was written, except Latin, which continued to
    be the language of learning and of the church.
    Even after French ceased to be the native language of anyone in England, it
    remained the language of fashion, the second language of the cultivated and
    educated classes. Thus French words continued to pour into the English vocabulary
    long after French rule was a thing of the past.
    The borrowed vocabulary touched almost every comer of life: fashion,
    dress, social life (gown, veil, satin, dance, conversation); court, government, and
    legal procedures (tax, parliament, liberty, mayor, justice, jury, fraud); the church
    (prayer, clergy, religion, faith); war (battle, soldier, lieutenant, besiege); the arts
    (painting, beauty, cathedral, poet, tragedy, preface, paper, geometry, surgeon). In
    addition to such classifiable groups of words, an endless variety of common words
    of all kinds came into use from French: very, age, gentle, final, flower, sure,
    surprise. The lists could be extended by the thousands and the borrowing process
    continued for centuries until by 1500. English speakers surely must have known
    more French than English words. The proportion of French words in today's
    English remains high.
    But in spite of this almost overwhelming influx of French words, English
    remained essentially English, and by the latter half of the fourteenth century the
    law courts and Parliament returned to the use of English for the conduct of their
    business. More important writers such as Chaucer, Eangland, Malory choose to
    write English, and under the influence of John Wyclif, the Bible was translated
    into English for the first time since the Old English period.
    By the 1400 the time of Chaucer's death not only was English established
    as the language of the land, but also the English spoken in London, by now the
    largest commercial centre and seaport of the country as well as the meeting place

    2
    of Parliament and the centre of government – was rapidly becoming the standard.
    In another century, by 1500, English was firmly established, recognizably
    modern in a great many respects and entering upon the period of Modern English.
    But the great wave of classical influence that swept English culture and thought
    during the 16th and 17th centuries. Renaissance exerted another strong influence
    upon the language.
    Englishman borrowed with almost greater readiness from the Latin and
    Greek which they came to respect so highly and study so avidly. Thousands upon
    thousands of classical words flooded the vocabulary.
    A random selection of a few words that seem vital today might contain:
    industry, maturity, admiration, education, insane, emancipate, exist, extract,
    confidence, anticipate, illustrate, multiply, benefit, paragraph, contradict, delicate.
    Such changes in the language have the excitement of history. They are
    largely the story of how invasion and conquest, shifting political fortunes and
    changing patterns of civilization and culture have molded our language. These
    changes go on continuously, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, depending
    upon external events. These changes are more complicated to explain, but knowing
    a little about them can help a good deal in understanding some important things
    about our language.
    Some differences between the old and modern English are simply
    differences in spelling. The letters b and ð represent the sound we spell th. The
    digraph æ represents a sound about like the a in hat. Generally speaking old
    English spelling was much more phonetic than ours.

    Changes of endings (words)


    urum our
    heofonum heaven
    eorðan earth
    forgyfað forgive
    tobecume become
    alys release

    3
    Latin borrowing tamptatian and rice which we now translate kingdom,
    though many of us know its German cognate Reich in other contexts. Some
    meanings are changed: [hlaf and syle]. Hlaf is our word loaf, which we use only
    for bread shaped in a special way, and syle is our sell.
    Old English strikes us with freer word order. It is different from us.
    By the end of the 16th century English was truly a national language, as the
    English translation of the Bible in 1611 indicates very well.
    The introduction of printing into England towards the end of the 15th
    century rapidly increased the number of people who could read and write.
    Early in the 17th century the great expansion of English began. It took
    English into all corners of the globe, among which was America, where the
    language became firmly established. Later it became a vital second language in
    India and the language of Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
    Still later it became an important second language in such countries as
    Japan and in many of the new colonies of Africa, which after their independence
    have continued to rely upon it for their common language. As a result of this
    expansion, English is now probably the major world language.

    You might also like